Reverend Norman Jimerson interview

This is an interview with the Reverend Norman Jimerson , a r etired
minister in Washington , D. C. Reverend Jimerson was Director of
Al abama Council on Human Re l ations in Birmingham , Alabama , during
the height of the Civil Rights movement. He often served as an
unofficial liaison between the Black and white communities in
Birmingham. This interview discusses his recollections and
perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham with
parti cular attention to his own role as well as that of the
Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth. This interview was conducted at
Reverend Jimerson 1s home in Washington , D. C. on June 13 , 1989.
The interviewer was Andrew M. Manis.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Reverend Jimerson , can you begin by giving me
your background in terms of where you grew up, and your
educational and religious background up until the time you moved
to Birmi ngham.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Sure . I grew up in Corning, New York. I
grew up in the American Baptist Church. I went to a conservative
Baptist church for two years just after my dad died when I was
ten years old. And then we moved back into the more liberal wing
of the American Baptist churches. In high school I considered
being a minister , at the beginning of high school days. My
father went into politics and I ended up in engineering. In 1940
I went to the University of Michigan School of Engineering . In
1943 I went into the army and served in the South Pacific as a
first lieutenant. In 1947 I was released from the army hospital
and got married in September and went back to the University of
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Michigan and at that time I decided to go into the ministry.
Then I went to Andove r - Newton Theol ogical School from 194 9 t o
1952. I was ordained and went to a small community church with
no denominational affiliation i n New Hampshire. From there in
1955 I went to a good school at Boston Un i versity and knew a
couple of professors who had known Ki ng . We talked a little bit
about King. Not a lot . At that poi n t I was preparing for work
as a prison chaplain , and I went t o Virgi nia in Petersburg a s
chaplain at the federal r eformatory in 1957 . In 157 mass ive
resistance was underway in Virginia . Race was an i ssue not
touched by the white churches. I led a couple of workshops fo r
the Pe t e rsburg Ministerial Association on race r elations. At my
job as chaplin at the federal reformatory, which was integrated,
it was very clear that I would jeopardize my job if I was in
favor of segr egation . The past ors in local churches were in
jeopardy i f they acknowledged integration was appropriate. So ,
in that r o l e t hen , it was ve r y safe to tackle a topic like that .
The first year we had a fellow from the Southern Regional Council
come as a speaker and the next year a minister from Ri chmond came
a l ong with someone from the Southern Regional Council . At that
point they told me that they were having a hard time find i ng
anybody who would be willing t o be the Direc t or of the Alabama
Council on Human Relations .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I can imagine .
REVEREND JIMERSON: Tha t was back in the fall of 19 60 , Bob Hughes
had been the director of the Alabama Council up until about June
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but I have a feeling it was more like later in the fall , in
September that he left t hat job and became a mi ssionary in
Southern Rhodesia . So over a period of just a few months I
negotiated and thought t hat maybe God's calling was for me to do
what nobody else wanted to do, and that was to go to Alabama .
[Laughs1 . So I went down in May of 1961 for an interview for the
job . The [people I) wor ked with at the reformatory made all
kinds of objecti ons and had hosti lity t owards me for taking a job
like that -- asked me what color roses I wanted for my cemetary
grave . When I got down there I found that there were two or
three young fellows in their twenties who were interested in the
job . So I went ahead and interviewed for the job but my
understanding was tha t I went down because they couldn ' t find
anybody. And so, not to make too long a story but I called David
Vann , the chair of the committee. Many times I couldn ' t reach
him to tell h i m that I was not interested . So [later) I did
decide to accept the job . I interviewed for the job a week
before t he Freedom Riders were beaten up i n Birmingham on
Mothe r 's Day . It was in t hat period just after I interviewed
that the bus was burned i n Anniston . I don ' t know the exact date
but i t was r i ght near Mother ' s Day in 1961.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Bot h occurred on Mother ' s Day , May 1 4 .
REVEREND J IMERSON: So then they was preparing to go to
Birmi ngham on August 1. My resignation was effective July 3 1 at
the federal reformatory. And then we took a trip to Birmingham
and found a house . When we got back from Birmingham the r ealtor
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called me up and said that the earnest money that I had put down
was sent back to me and that they were not about to sell a house
to a communist or somebody working for the communists which was
the Alabama Council on Human Relations. So he said, "I don ' t
know if you know it but that is a communist organization . We
can't do anything with anybody who is working with it . " Instead
of fighting that as an issue, we did hire an attorney, Charles
Morgan , t o guide us as we prepared as a family . The Council
hired him to guide me and my family in whatever else was
necessary to move into Alabama . Morgan ' s great laughter was that
he ' d never work for somebody who was about to move into the state
and might be arrested at the state line. Morgan has a great gift
for exaggeration . But anyway we took another trip to Birmingham
and at that point we tal ked to David Vann and Roger Hansen and
several other people to try to figure out where would be a good
location to - - bring a family of four children. It was decided
that it would be much safer physically , there would be much less
danger of damage to the home if we lived in a middle class , upper
middle class white neighborhood. So we thought about some
locations in Birmingham but they thought that it didn ' t have
quite the class . And people thought the Klan would be a little
more accessible to certain parts of Birmingham than Homewood .
So, for those kinds of considerations we moved to Saulter Road
just off Route 31 going over the hill South towards Montgomery.
ANDREW M. MANIS: This didn't increase your misgivings about
going there?
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REVEREND JIMERSON: It t ook me several months to decide that
that ' s what I really needed to do. No , I had a very strong sense
that this is what I was supposed to do . There wasn ' t any
question about it and the question was to do as much good as you
could. Psychologically I prepared myself by saying that there
would probably one chance in a thousand o r ten thousand that
anything would happen to me. I had known a lot of stories of
Blacks who were mutilated or murdered in Birmingham but very few
whites. At some time I might have had trouble thinking of a
white person in the last ten years that had been harmed so I felt
relatively safe.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Tell me about the beginnings of your work there
after you got settled.
DR. JIMERSON: I started August 1. There was an office a lready
set up in the Comer Building, twelfth floor. The secretary,
whose sympathies mayor may not have been with the Council but
like a working- poor white person who needed a job and was
content to be in the office and kept herself busy when I was out
of town reading comic books that she stored in her desk. Finally
we decided that she was not that competent and we fired her.
Then there was some real suspicion that there could be a real
problem by somebody who was not sympathetic to what we were
doing , who knew the office, knew what I was doing. So there was
this constant l evel of fear. She was of almost no use in helping
me figure out what the Council had been or was doing. So we made
a request of David Vann and other members of the Board , David and
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there was a Reverend Wilson, a Black minister nearing retirement
age in the sixties , who would come by the office. Interestingly
enough , I have always been the kind of person that when I am
getting ready for a job I ask anybody I can find "What would you
do if you had this job?" I remember being at a Human Relations
Workshop for two weeks at Fisk University and I asked Thurgood
Marshall and he said he ' d get the hell out which seemed kind of
blunt but not he l pful. Interesting side l ight. But as i de from
getting out everybody , I talked to seemed to say that unless
there was an overpowering economic interest to change , racial
attitudes in Birmingham would probably never change. I didn ' t
like to believe it but I decided that probably was right . In the
meantime when the use of moral persuasion and commitment to work
alongsi de the Blacks to work for recognition as human beings
seemed appropriate.
ANDREW M. MANIS: In Chuck Morgan ' s book he mentions that first
you attempted to involve yourself in a Baptist church in
Birmingham and didn ' t find a particularly warm welcome . What
church was that and can you tell me something of the welcome you
did receive there?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well , I guess when I first moved to
Birmingham , the first Sunday I looked up a fellow who had been in
seminary a year ahead of me at Newton at Boston and I can ' t think
of his name at the moment. He was pastor of the Vestavia Hills
Baptist Church. He considered himself a great liberal who was
going to integrate that church. It would probably take twenty
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years or two generations , but he was going to integrate it . I
got there and he we lcomed us and the second Sunday I guess -­well,
he kept urging us t o join the church . The second Sunday he
said he was going t o be out of town and wanted to know if I' d
preach . It was about the fourth Sunday I was there and I decided
there was no point in starting out with my thoughts about
segregation and integration , but I spoke in the morning about
Christ- centered p r eaching and in the evening a simil ar theme . He
decided tha t it would l ook like he was trying to hide something
if he did not put in the bulletin that my job was Director of the
Alabama Council on Human Relations . The next week he started
getti ng f l ack from people who had heard about that group and
thought of it as a communist group and so then a Sunday School
teacher called me up and he wanted me to come and see him. He
told me that I was like Hitler and also that he thought Hitler ' s
ideas were right whi ch was a big contradiction . But it was very
confused .
ANDREW M. MANIS: What connection did he see between you and
Hitl er?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Just somebody you don ' t like. I never did
figure out why he thought I was like Hitler . But it was very
obvious that he admired Hitler's racial attitudes . And he
thought that Hitler was right on a lot of what he did . With that
acknowledged associati on , then I was open to expect anything from
him . What I got from him was a warm welcome for me and my family
to leave the church.
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ANDREW M. MANIS: How did he put it?
REVEREND JIMERSON: That this wasn 't the place we really
belonged.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You never did join the church?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you find -- you went from there to which
Presbyterian church?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Let me just say a curious sidelight of how
the dynamics worked in the church. The deacons were going to
vote on whether I should join the church or not.
ANDREW M. MANIS: This was before?
REVEREND JIMERSON: This was after I preached. I t was the third
week I was in the church.
ANDREW M. MANIS: But that's unusual that they would do that
without your having walked the aisle and applied for membership .
REVEREND JIMERSON: We had applied for membership. We applied
for membership and the deacons were going to vote and in churches
where I have been the pastor would just automaticall y welcome you
as a new member and present you to the deacons instead of the
deacons voting. In some churches I guess it was the custom for
the deacons to vote . I remember there was some confusion in the
congregati on , consternation and hostility that somebody working
in human relations - - at that time in Birmingham it was
considered by most people in Birmingham as ipso facto communist
as a derogatory term not knowing anything about what communism
was but as a term of hatred. The deacons came into a meeting and
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they spent a long time d i scussing and debating this. Finally
they decided that I be asked to leave the church . The vote ended
up instead of us becoming members that they would not ask us to
leave the church. So , with that we looked for another church and
there was a Presbyterian minister encouraging us to come to his
church . He said he needed Sunday School teachers. It was a poor
little section of Birmingham South of Homewood, North of
Homewood, toward Birmingham . So we went there. Then in about
three weeks he came to the house and he spent an hour and a half
before he got to the point. When he got to the point , he did it
so clumsily that I didn't even get the point, my wife did . What
he was there for was to invite us not to come to his church
anymore, just to attend . So we found a large Presbyterian church
in Mountain Brook. Tom Duncan was considered moderate. We
attended there. My wife found a real home there. I became quite
uneasy that Tom was not addressing the issue at all. I didn't
expect him to address the issue much or in anything other than
vague general terms. So then we went to a Pilgrim Congregational
church in Mountain Brook. Because of the color of the roof they
called it our Blue Heaven. That church was about evenly divided.
It took one vote which was 51- 49 on whether a meeting of
Congregationalists -- a meeting of the demonimation -- could meet
in their church . The issue was that there were some Black
congregationalists around. So we ended up there and stayed there
and were there near the end of our years . I think you had
another question.
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ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, you answered it when you began to talk
about the sort of transition into and then out of the
Presbyterian . Did you find, other than David Vann and Chuck
Morgan, did you find any white Christians who were open to what
you were doing?
REVEREND JIMERSON: They were few and far between but there were
some. David Vann introduced me to some young lawyers and George
Taylor was a young l awyer who occasionally , I didn't have a lot
of contact with him, but he was very much interested in what I
was doing and very supportive personally. Publicly he would not
be identified with me nor was David Vann interested in being seen
on the streets in Birmingham with me. It was that kind of
climate. It's a little difficult to remember that it was all
that bad. In contacts I had a good warm personal friendship with
Ed -- who was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in
downtown Birmingham -- Ed Ramage. My efforts in Birmingham from
the beginning were to quickly establish a rapport with the Black
community, but my work was primarily with the white community.
Although I spent a lot of time, I spent about half of my time or
more in the Black community to know what was going on and to do
things like crisis intervention with Black, if tragedy was
happening to Blacks, like if a Black was murdered, like calling
the family. My job was to research so that I would know what was
happening in Birmingham and across the state . Primarily the
demonstrations brought it out but at that point a lot of people
from the press would call me up and I would give them background
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data and then describe various people they might want to talk to
get first hand information about the people involved . So there
were a very few whites that were sympathetic. There were more in
the Unitarian church than any other church. A lot of people were
in the Unitarian church simply on the matter of race as distinct
from theology. That church was known and actively involved in
supporting human decency, human rights and to the extent that in
probably about '63 there was a representative from the State
Legislature -- the State Legislature had sort of a committee on
anti- communist activities or some such title, and they had a spy
at the Unitarian Church to see what was going on. Paid informer.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You mentioned that your work was primarily with
the white community but that you were also were involved with
developing rapport with the Black community. Really about the
time you moved to Birmingham Shuttlesworth was moving out, at
least in terms of his pastorate. What was Birmingham saying
about Shuttlesworth when you got there, both the whites that you
encountered, and among those whites, both the liberal types like
David Vann and the others who ran you out of various churches?
How were they responding? What did they think of someone like
Shuttlesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: The liberal whites I would say were
generally , well, I guess liberal and moderates would be the same
in two categories. Those that were actually taking some risk of
being known as active in Civil Rights, I think there was a very
clear admiration and appreciation for Shuttlesworth. David Vann
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types were more of the attitude that Shuttlesworth was
unnecessarily causing trouble, like when he got beat up with
chains, that he had provoked this and that they could make
progress faster wi thout that ki nd of Black agitation.
ANDREW M. MANIS : What did you think of their viewpoints?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I felt that Shuttlesworth was a real hero and
anybody getti ng beaten up by whites because of his stand on Civil
Rights was an acknowledged l eader that earned respect.
Shuttlesworth was kind of a loner and I 'm not clear as to why I
never had a lot of contact with Shuttlesworth. I did talk with
J. L. Ware at [Trinity] Baptist church and with a lot of other
guys and I don ' t know if I real l y looked up Shuttlesworth for an
interview. I respected him. I went to several mass meetings
which Shuttlesworth organized and really appreciated and felt
that thi s was the one sign of movement in the Black community,
because of , well, I think it could have been any night , but it
was Monday night meetings. So even at those meetings it would be
like King woul d come through or other speakers and still never
really had an interview with Shuttl esworth except during t he
demonstrations Shuttlesworth came to me for something, support or
something.
ANDREW M. MANIS: In ' 63?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah, and I remember as we tried to figure
out where we would meet .
ANDREW M. MANIS: And you can ' t remember when during the
demonstrations this occurred?
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REVEREND JIMERSON: I can l t . It was during a period when there
was a lot of police surveillance . About 300 cruisers , s t ate
police , came in from al l over the state.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Would that have been.
REVEREND JIMERSON: That would have been , -- I don ' t connect my
interview with Shuttlesworth with that event. It was i n the
period when the demons t rat ions were going on and .
ANDREW M. MANIS: If the s t ate troopers were in from Montgomery ,
is that what you ' re saying?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No , I 'm saying that would be in the period of
time that, in that period of months , but it was not that
particular week. It was not this week. I don ' t tie it in with
that event. I think i t was earlier in the demonstrations . Now I
can ' t remember what Shuttl esworth wanted to talk to me about .
But there was some discussion about where we would meet. Finally
it was decided we woul d meet at 11 :00 after some meeti ng that he
had . So I said to him , "The only p l ace to go is in my offi ce in
the Comer Buil d i ng ." At n i ght the front door was open and I
would have had access to my key. I am trying to think of whether
the elevator operator was on duty that night. I think she was
not . I think it was being operated automatically. The next
morning I remember she said to me -- she ' d always been very
friendly and I had always been very nice to her and spoken to
her. But we never sai d anything about what I did .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was she ...
REVEREND JIMERSON: Elevator operator , a Black elevator operator .
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So the Black elevator operator, her eyes lit up you know when she
saw me and I thought "Well, you really are somebody" and she said
"I understand you had Shuttlesworth in your office last night."
I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact I did . How did you find out?"
She said, "The police came by and they told me."
ANDREW M. MANIS: She was impressed with that?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah, she had a special sparkle for me now
that she knew that I was associated with Shuttlesworth.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did she offer an opinion of her own?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No, but it was very clear to me that she
really admired Shuttlesworth and anybody that would associate
with him.
ANDREW M. MANIS: That's interesting, but you don ' t remember any
of the discussion?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I really don ' t. It was something about
strategy and he wanted to confer with me about strategy and
getti ng information out, but I really don't know.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me move then to something a bit more
specific and earlier than this. Just to set this up, according
to one of the letters that you wrote as a report which I have
seen around February of '62 when the Miles College students were
contemplating demonstrations, selective buying campaign,
apparently you contacted Dr. Lucius Pitts who was then President
of Miles College and sort of served as liaison between him and
some white business leaders and they met and I assume you met
with them over the next few weeks. What can you tell me about
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some of those meetings?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I remember setting up some meetings with
Black leaders and white communi ty leaders. But I had put it in a
different time frame in my memory . But on the occasions that
and it probably was Pitts ' s suggestion -- people like the
suffragan bishop , Murray , of the Episcopal church and there would
be people like Ed Ramage , although I don ' t know specifically if
he was there , but these were downtown pastors, got together with
people l ike Sid Symer , who was President , Birmingham Realty, to
talk over issues and what they were about . Meetings were very
productive in that there was some acknowledgement by the whites
there that things needed to change and I think it was a learning
experi ence for both sides to get acquainted and know what the
task was and that the whites were going to make a little bit of
progress -- enough to mollifythe Blacks and that the Blacks were
going to make some progress in the situation represented by these
whites that represented economic and religious business interest.
So I remember, for exampl e, in the meetings just little
sidelights -- A. D. King , looked at his watch, you know, and they
were going ok. And Smyer said, "Hey , I agreed to be the last one
to speak and so I want everyone of you here while I am speaking.
You can take all the time you want but don ' t decide you are going
to leave before I speak. " Of course, Syd Smyer was the kind of
leader who was accustomed to that kind of attention . I guess one
of the other things was that they were just interested in getting
together. You place this at February '62; it was April of ' 63
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that the demonstrations began. There were demonstrations
scheduled for October of ' 62 by King , SCLC . There were a lot of
contacts. About that time Lucius Pitts , President of Miles ,
became the President of the Alabama Council on Human Relations ,
and he was interested in supporting me in my efforts in any way
that he could and also I was interested in pumpint his brain as
to how I as an individual on the board could best proceed . We
had a l ot of good meeti ngs . I remember one night there was a
threat at Miles. Somebody had threatened to shoot in with a
shotgun or and actually fired shots into the campus. For
circumstances like that we would get together in the late evening
after all of our appointments were cleared . I remember about
midnight being in his office one time and he put his arm around
me and said "You ' re rea l ly a Black hearted guy." He said,
"You ' re a great mixer. You're Black or white but you ' re neither.
All the Blacks can see when they talk to you is white and all the
whites can see is Black ."
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me get back to those meetings before I ask
another question. You said you felt like both sides learned a
good deal.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Urn- hum!
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did they learn? What did the whites
learn? What did the Blacks learn? I guess that the whites had
more to learn than the Blacks did about what the other side was
thinking, but I 'm interested in what both sides learned from your
prospective .
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REVEREND JIMERSON: I guess it was -- what the Blacks had to
learn was the attitudes and feelings of the ones who wanted to
see progress but were afraid about how it was going to be
extremely cautious in any progress that could be made and yet
knowing that there had to be some progress for economic reasons.
Sid Smyer was a clearcut example of the thing that I had been
told ahead of time which was Birmingham's business was hurting
economically and there would be any shift for change. I think
that the Blacks had to learn that, had to take into consideration
who the opposition was, opposition in terms of negotiations. We
knew the opposition was the Klan with chains and all that stuff.
What impressed me most was that during -- I think we only had two
discussions. The discussions were called off I guess by the
whites but what the Blacks kept emphasizing was that they had
been denied their freedom for 200 years, 300 years, and that they
wanted all their freedom now. It really frustrated me in
thinking that there was no way that everything was going to be
turned around upside down, but there had to be some steps. The
whites had to learn was that the Blacks were not going to be
slowed down and mollified with some token little gestures. But
then as David Vann put it, which may have been at least one part
of the truth is that the whites knew that they had to find ways
of helping the Blacks achieve some measurable visible results.
So which later now, now we are jumping about a year into the
negotiations but eventually it ended the demonstrations which
started in April and you know better than I do when they ended.
17
ANDREW MANIS: It was May 10 when the truce was announced.
REVEREND JIMERSON: In those weeks it became the Blacks and
whites sitting down together working out how they could present
enough change that the Black community would feel that there was
some success and how the Blacks would interpret to the community
the significance of some of these small visible tokens. One of
the strange things is, I was never included in the negotiations,
although I kept in touch with both Blacks and whites about what
was going on. [PauseJ. I'm jumping from that picture of the
meetings with the white leadership, another time when the white
leadership got together was when King asked me through I guess it
was Abernathy, he called me up and said that King wanted me to
get the white ministers in Birmingham together and he would talk
with them and bring some of his leaders. On this occasion he
brought his brother, A. D., he brought other Black ministers,
probably Ware, Shuttlesworth. There were six or seven white
religious leaders.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you know who they were?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Bishop Murray and my mind really gives out in
trying to think who those other were. Ed Ramage would have been
a logical person. I can't really be sure that he was there but I
would have strong feeling that he would have to be, and there was
a fellow at the Baptist church, Stallings. I would think [EarlJ
Stallings was there. I'm sure there were a couple of
Presbyterians.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You've named three who were among those who
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wrote a letter to King whi ch resulted in "Letter from Birmingham
Jail " which is very interesting. Tell me about that meeting.
REVEREND JIMERSON: That meeting was really interesting in that
people who had been very liberal, well, liberal in the sense of
really wanting to see something happen to advance human relations
I 'm talking about whites like Bishop Murray , who was not out
in front, was not saying much, but wanted to see some progress,
how at this point, they became antagonisti c towards King and the
demonstrations. In this meeting I can ' t place in terms of the
other events during the demonstrations , but this took place I
think the first week of the demonstrations .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Before King was arrested?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah, before King was arrested. This had to
have taken place before the Blacks went to white churches on
Easter Sunday . At that meeting it was King trying to -- he
called me . He wanted me to help get the people together. He was
trying to interpret and explain what his philosophy was and why
they were having demonstrati ons . Two people were upset because
it was personally impinging on them . Outside forces were putting
pressure on them that they didn ' t like. That meant that white
people in the congregations who, as the Blacks would say, want
progress but let my grandchildren deal with it, they were putting
pressure on the ministers. So it was an interchange -- maybe
this was one of the few times that there were no visible results
from King's speech -- talk. I would speculate -- there was one
very interesting experience in that meeting of religious leaders,
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both Black and white, where Sid Smyer said to the group "Don ' t
you forget now, I know the Black community is divided. I went to
this person and I went to this person and I went to this person"
and he named four or five names and I am sure it was Reverend
Shuttlesworth who said "Tell me, Mr. Smyer, you made the mistake
of skipping one person , the one person that is important in
this. "
ANDREW MANIS: Meaning himself?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah. "You didn ' t talk to me." He was the
one who was running the mass meetings. He was the one who was
doing it. As a matter of fact, it may not be too far off when
King came to Birmingham and was seen negotiating with
Shuttlesworth instead of being with the Black Baptist or any
other group. It Shuttlesworth's tht he negotiated with.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did Smyer make a response to this comment by
Shuttlesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Good question. I think his response only was
that out of total frustration , that he had tried to deal with him
but I don't remember other than just kind of being annoyed that
Shuttlesworth would say you talked to everybody except the one
who counted.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I recognize that I am asking you to remember
conversations almost 25 years ago but as best you can piece
together any exchanges that occurred would be helpful to me to
flesh out that meeting because it sounds like a very significant
one. Can you tell me something of what King said? I would
20
assume what he said sounded a l o t like what later appeared in the
"Letter from Birmingham Jail."
REVEREND JIMERSON: No , I cannot remember any specific content.
In general his purpose and his theme was to explain why they had
to have demonstrations.
ANDREW M. MANIS: So his theme was why they had to have
demonstrations at that time?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Right, why it had to be now. Why we can't
wait.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You mentioned there was no visible kind of
response in terms of converting their viewpoints , I assume that ' s
what you meant?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Other than that exchange with Smyer, can you
call anything else that was said in the meeting once it was
thrown open to actual conversation?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No , I really can ' t. I did have in my mind
that that was a very significant event and I guess one of the few
times or the only time that King ever asked me to do anything.
Let me just mention in the Black community , I had been over to
Reverend Ware ' s house two or three times. Normally I went
without appointments . I can ' t remember why I would not have
tried to make an appointment . Probably I had an appointment with
Reverend Ware. But I went over to his house and the place was
all locked up and closed down tight. It was late in the
afternoon and it seemed really deserted. This happened to me two
21
or three times. I explained this , I talked about this to some of
the Black people that I knew well and they said that that would
be typical for people in the Black community. A white person
would come to their door, they would turn off the TV, turn out
the lights and just be like nobody ' s home. Now, what did
surprise me was that Reverend Ware did invite me to preach at his
church one Sunday.
ANDREW M. MANIS: He did?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Urn- hum! The most remarkable thing about that
was just my understanding of the Black culture , getting there
twenty minutes early, of course, like I always do , being met by
Reverend Ware , we met in his office which was just off the
platform and they were singing and taking up collections and it
got eleven o'clock and nothing happened. He said, "No, just sit
still." So at about twenty to twelve o'clock we went out and the
service went on until one o ' clock and then at one o'clock it came
time to preach . I preached twenty minutes. It may have been
quarter to one until five after . Then there was an offering and
some more singing. The remarkable thing about that was it just
seemed unusual that as President of the Black Baptist Ministers '
Association, he was the only one who invited me to preach. I
visited a lot of Black churches, just to be known and to be
supporti ve and to learn and find out what it was all about.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you take that as a sign of mistrust of you?
REVEREND JIMERSON: That I wasn't invited to preach? No , not
really. I took that as more like there would be no reason for
22
any white person to preach or for that matter, any person to
preach, other than when vacations
ANDREW M. MANIS: Were they skeptical at first of your work?
REVEREND JIMERSON: There may have been skepticism but this never
became apparent to me. What was apparent to me was there was
just overwhelming excitement and appreciation for any white
person to do the job that I was doing. This came through for the
first couple of years during the demonstrations, I guess it was
when I first met the first Black -- when I had contact with the
first Black Muslim in Alabama. I had known Black Muslims in
prison and this was an "Every white man is a devil" attitude.
The only thing that came near skepticism about my work was people
in "Snick" [SNCC or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee], who had become very disenchanted with King's
approach. I guess in general it was a disenchantment with
nonviolence. This was near the end of the period. Let me speak
about an event that took place and I don't know why Shuttlesworth
was not on my mind at a meeting of the Black Baptist Ministerial
Association about the second week of demonstrations. King had
been able to work through to get an invitation to speak to that.
J. L. Ware was distinctly opposed to the demonstrations. He was
the president, which carried considerable influence on other
Black Baptist ministers. It is amazing how much influence a
pastor has in a congregation in the Black community but also how
much, the basis, I guess, how seriously they take the president
in a group. So Black Baptists were distinct in not being
23
supportive of the demonstrations. I went over to hear King ' s
presentati on . King gave a marvelous ta l k . At the end of the
t a lk, the Baptist Association agreed to support the
demonstrations, which meant that Ki ng had t aken the leadership of
the particular group at that particular time away f r om their
president. The onl y recour se the president had to do was move
a l ong with it . When they are going off i n o t her directions you
have to r un and get ahead of them. So , J. L. Ware , well the few
t i mes I ever talked wi th Ki ng , I had lunch wi th him at the Gaston
Motel right after t hat . We had set that up some time ahead .
John L . Drew came by and sai d to King , "Marvelous t alk , marvelous
talk , it really took t he leadershi p away from the president ."
ANDREW M. MANIS : How did King r espond to that?
REVEREND J I MERSON: Oh , he thanked h i m for h i s compl iments.
ANDREW M. MANIS: He just ignored the part about taking the
l eadershi p away from t he leader?
REVEREND J IMERSON: He had no interest in that other t han
persuading him to join the demonstrations . I think in King ' s
response there was somet hing about " It ' s good to have him on
board."
ANDREW M. MANIS: Is it fair to say that Ware went a l ong wi th it
because he more or l ess had to in order to retai n his l eadership
but he remai ned hal f heart ed in his own personal support of the
demonstrati ons?
REVEREND J I MERSON: NOw, I do not know . I never ta l ked with Ware
about that decis i on. But , of course, tha t would have been a
24
touchy thing for a Black or anybody to talk to him about. I
would speculate that Ware was caught in the middle. He came down
on one side where he also had some reasons to join in supporting
the demonstrations. Of course you realize that there was a
tremendous amount of pressure on the Black preacher not to
support demonstrations because this would attract the attention
of the Klan. And specifically , back when the Sixteenth Street
Church was bombed John Porter told me and others that his real
problem was to keep the people in his church supporting the
demonstrations. He was trying to say that we ' ve already lost
four and their lives would be in vain , their deaths will be in
vain , if we don ' t continue. If we stop now because they killed
fou r , t hen what we have been doing is down the drain. When I say
that, most of the t i me I was of the strong opinion that Bl ack
ministers, whether they thought someone else was taking their
power away from them or not , they had a lot of support and a lot
of pressure from the congregation to be in favor of Civil Rights.
So it was more the exception that there were pressures not to be
involved.
ANDREW M. MANIS : And that seemed pretty obvious to you as you
observed it?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Since you d i d have a fairly good opportunity to
know both Ware and Pitts and interact with them, in conversations
with them, did they express misgivings about Fred Shuttlesworth
and his leadership style or any sort of rivalry with him? I say
25
that because I've got down a quote from one of your reports where
you were talking about a meeting in which you felt such a meeting
would have a wholesome effect if these members of the Black
community would work together "instead of spending so much of
their time and energy fretting over who is going to be the
leader. " That's a quote from you.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Let me go around that question for just a
moment. One of the things that was very apparent was that after
the demonstrations had been cancelled in October of 1962, I was
told by different people that the only person that King was in
touch with was Shuttlesworth. The disunity or the quarreling
over who's going to be the leader in the Back community was more
of a general tone or general statement then that I had specific
instances that I could tie it to. Lucius Pitts, I am sure it
was, who said that when there is so little progress being made
and there are several different groups and several individuals
powerful, a Black preacher for example in a big congregation
would be a powerful person, that then it was really a dogfight to
get some credit and there was so little to get credit for. I
think of Pitts as being one of the more intelligent planners that
I knew and one who was deeply committed to anything that made
progress. Probably one of the best strategists I knew, so that
he would be more of describing to me how the struggle for power
within the Black community was going on. Probably Pitts was the
only Black that I knew of that --well there were a few lawyers,
Black lawyers. He would have been the primary selection for my
26
information about the struggles in the Black community . What
intrigues me is that while there was this struggle. That was not
an important part of the Birmingham struggle. It did not
interfere greatly with the progress being made. I remember there
was a minister [C. Herbert1 Oliver who was taking depositions and
writing up incidents of brutality against Blacks. Police in
uniform, police out of uniform, whites , rednecks , Klan, whatever .
When he had documented over a hundred instances. He continued to
be opposed to the demonstrations. I never really figured out why
or what but he was getting some flack from other Blacks because
he was opposed to it. It never occurred to me even though he was
trying to explain it to me just what he had against it. I can be
s ure that Oliver ' s opposition was not like many of the Bl acks
that were publicly opposed to the demonstrations out of real fear
of what the white community would do. So , of course , in the
Black community there was always the constant struggle. The
maid would go to work and talk about how terrible things were
downtown and the Backs were causing a lot of trouble . Then she
would be one of the l oudest singers at the mass meetings .
ANDREW M. MANIS: You mentioned that Pitts was your best source
for getting a handle on this power struggle within the Black
community. You say you don ' t think it was all that important in
how it affected the issue of progress. From the perspective of a
biographer of one o f the persons involved , it sounds pretty
important. So I am interested in what you learned from Dr.
Pitts. What were his descriptions, his perceptions of that
27
struggle? What was causing it? How much of it had to do with
Shuttlesworth and his personality or his style? In a round about
way of asking , what did he think of Shutt lesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I am going to have to speculate on filling in
gaps in memory. I do not recall other than just some vague
recollections that Pitts addressed on the topic of his attitude
towards Shuttlesworth . The way that I recall this is that Pitts
thought that Shuttlesworth was out there doing something as
distinct from a lot of others who were doing nothing and talking
big. So my impression after twenty- five or thirty years would be
that Pitts had really admired and deeply respected Shuttlesworth ,
and of course , I had the utmost respect for Pitts. If Pitts '
opinion against many o t her dentists , doctors and stuff tha t I
talked with , I would have strong leaning, not that I would always
take Pi tts ' word , but I would have a strong leaning that he had
the most perceptive understanding of what was going on. My
recollections were that Pitts respected and appreciated and
support ed Shuttleswort h .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did he ever give off and did you ever pick up
any sense of frustration of Shuttlesworth, in spite of
admiration? Perhaps he was frustrated with ways and means that
Shuttlesworth used.
REVEREND JIMERSON: My remembrance was that there may have been
some frustration with Shut tlesworth ' s s t atements and tactics. In
terms of the demonstrations , there was no question that he
strongly supported the demonstrations all the way.
28
ANDREW M. MANIS: From the beginning?
REVEREND JIMERSON : Yeah .
ANDREW M. MANIS: He never had to be converted about it?
REVEREND JIMERSON: There was no ques tion at all where Pitts was
with the . t he vast majority of the Blacks , even those who
were scar ed of their jobs, they might have at times said t o their
white boss that they weren't interested when really they were.
Let me mention the kind of life we lived there . Pitts told me
that he wa nted to find out if his phone was tapped. La ter he
asked me if I had any sources that could find out . But the
students from Miles Co llege we r e down demonstrating and this I
had forgotten had happened l ong before the big demonstrations in
Birmingham . The Mi l es College students were down there and so
Pitts said to somebody, a friend of his, "Now when I call you up
tonight, no matter what I say , you just say ' yes , yes , yes 'lf and
I am not going to say now o r speak to you again about it but
anyway he set it up so that this guy would be getting a phone
call. He said "Don 't forget to be there at noon because that is
when the students are goi ng to be down at the corner of
somewhere . II Nobody was down there except about five police
cruiser s .
ANDREW M. MANIS : Well, that seems to indicate some phone taps
there.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Let me just say something about phone taps.
People kept t el ling me my phone was tapped . They said don't do
anything foolish but you know, I felt like I had to go a head and
29
do my business and so in August of '63 I asked the FBI to check
three phone numbers. At that point I decided that the FBI mayor
may not but they might check to see if the local police were
tapping my phone. Of course one of the curious things that there
is no real answer to is the cooperation between the FBI and the
local police and the southern prejudices of the FBI. But they
told me while I was on vacation that there was an article in the
paper that they found that three phones were tapped. One was
Pitts's home, one was my home, one was my office. So I never
had direct confirmation that it was me but that was close enough.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Your participation in some of the discussions
and meetings between Pitts and Smyer before those October
demonstrations , one in particular in mid-September, just before
the SCLC had its convention in Birmingham, there was a meeting
Sunday morning at 9:00 according to one of your reports where
basically someone indicated to Smyer that he was going to have to
deal with Shuttlesworth. Does that ring a bell that you can
reconstruct or narrate that for me? Not necessarily that
specific meeting but the general meetings held at that time.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well, the content of that meeting. I
remember meeting in that building or near there where the SCLC
convention was. In general there was a real problem to convince
the whites that there would be change. Smyer and others who knew
about the bad image of Birmingham and wanted to protect their
business interests, still had real difficulty with understanding
that there was going to have to be some real recognition, there
30
had to be significant change, visible no matter how token, but
there had to be some v i s ible changes. And there was real
reluctance on the whites to dea l with this . Now this, I 'm
speculating here that in the context of what you tell me that
Smyer would have , as I knew the dynamics of the situation, would
have had real difficulty in accepting the fact that Shuttlesworth
and the demonstrations was an event that they had to deal with.
At that point, if t hey kept loud enough criticism that they
wouldn't happen. The Birmingham News was strongly editorializing
that this was the most terrible thing that could ever happen , the
demonstrations in Birmingham. And then during the demonstrations
the whites kept feeling that, the ones who were now involved in
wanting to see some change, were stil l try ing to hang onto the
notion that the Blacks would run out of steam and the
demonstrations would fade away without any significant changes.
So there was more -- we would quiet the Blacks by riding out the
demonstrations , not making any change , not making any concessions
but that it would just wear off and things would get back to
normal and there would be less agitation because Blacks know they
can 't do anything . So it was that smugness or that certainty
that there wouldn't have to be any change . It really was -- as
the demonstrations go through I think probably what you have come
across would indicate, as Vann said and others that the only
thing that has really convinced the white community to really
negotiate and make some substantive changes in the negotiations
was the fact that the jails were just overloaded and getting more
31
crowded all the time.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me just mention a couple of other incidents
that took place during those years and you can tell me if you
have any particular recollections about what took place in those
incidents and how those might have affected you. The SCLC
convention of September '62 itself -- did you attend or
participate in any way and what were your perceptions of that
event as far as Birmingham was concerned?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well, I did attend some of the meetings and I
did so with some fear and trepidation because I was now under
injunction by the state and I had a trial coming up in October
it had to be October '62 for planning and participating in
demonstrations in Talladega, and so I was very concerned, and my
lawyer, Chuck Morgan, was very concerned that I not be seen and
identified with "the known communist agitators" who were involved
in Talladega. But I went anyway because I thought it was very
important to know what was going on and be a part of it. I
recall that there was great excitement about -- in the meeting.
It was very exciting. People were excited and then I can only
speculate in terms of the timing that had to be in the big pep
rally just before launching demonstrations in Birmingham in
October.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember Shuttlesworth doing anything
particularly significant or impressive in any of those meetings
at the convention? He was more or less hosting.
REVEREND JIMERSON: That's right. I had forgotten that. It
32
would have to be . Shuttlesworth was the host as the ACM, HI or
whatever .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I tend to call it just simply the Alabama
Christian Movement because it takes me less time to do that than
it does to remember the initials.
REVEREND JIMERSON: So obvi ously it was Shuttlesworth ' s show . It
doesn't have to be in my remembrance which is pretty poor about
that event . About a l l I remember about it i s that it was a t ime
of great excitement and the Blacks were sure there was going to
be some progress and they were on the right track and i nto some
demonstrations that would really make a change . Let me share
with you something that I ' ve shared with a few people . One of
the strangest things that I ever did was to be the messenger that
changed the date of the demonstrations . Let me take just a
minute . Davis Vann in August had some preprimary or primary had
set up card tables gett ing signatures to change the form of city
government. That e l ect ion was coming up in November. The more
September came a l ong , it was known that King had decided to have
demonstrations in October . The strategists that were list eni ng
to David Vann were rea l ly convinced that their efforts at getting
rid of Bull Connor would be totally eliminated if the
demonstrations took place just before the election , that Bull
Connor would be able to work that to his advantage and maintain
his position in power. So David Vann said to me, "Jim, you got
to go to Atlanta and talk with King and talk him out of having
the demonstrations now. " I kinda laughed. What he said made
33
sense to me. I agreed with the analysis and I am sure I called
on Ed to make appointments with King never having a firm
appointment. I can't imagine I would go without one but when I
got there King was bound up with white reporters from Newsweek
and Time Magazine I guess and New York Times. And also, which
may seem racist, or seem which may seem anti-King, which I don't
want to seem, but it was very difficult for white persons working
in human relations to get an appointment with King. Somehow he
didn't consider that part of his important strategy to work with
whites that were working alongside. Where and how, I don't know,
but I did meet with Wyatt T. Walker at the airport in Atlanta.
By this time Wyatt T. Walker was King's number one lieutenant and
whatever title he went by and based on the fact that Wyatt T.
Walker had been a member of a ministerial association he was one
of two or three Blacks that would come to the white ministerial
groups in Birmingham. It was an integrated group. They could
come but they didn't see any reason to come -- most Blacks. I
had preached in his church and shared communion with him and
assisted him in serving communion in his church. He had never
accepted my invitation to preach at the reformatory but he did
come over and I was able to arrange for Wyatt T. to come over and
speak to the white Baptist church in Hopewell which was most
remarkable that they would have a Black person come and speak.
This was in '59 and '60. So I had a past friendship with Wyatt
T. I told him, I said, "I came here to explain to you the
reasons why the demonstrations should be postponed." His
34
response was, "I don ' t want to hear it ." For forty-five mi nutes
we talked about whether he would hear what I had to say. Now
don ' t ask me how you can consume forty- f i ve minutes -- but I
wasn't gonna let it go . I hung in like a bulldog in saying in
any way that I could think of including things like saying "You
don ' t have to do anything. I'm just asking you to listen to the
reasons put forth by people that I feel deeply committed to
seeing progress in Birmingham." So , after forty-five minutes he
relented and said, "Well, I'll give you a couple of minutes."
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did he respond once you gave him the
reasons?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well , like "Now, you've said your piece . "
ANDREW M. MANIS: How do you think they f i nally decided to go
ahead and postpone just after the election?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well , with the danger of being overly
egotistical, my feeling is that this report is probably the only
direct report they had of what the political situation was in
Birmingham and the Blacks out of necessi ty had pretty well
decided that always there is some other time and there are ten
reasons why you shouldn ' t do anything now and so their reluctance
to even hear what was being said and done by the people
interested in the change , and even including Blacks and I am not
sure at this point -- I wish I had a better memory -- I think
this was the consensus too of most Blacks in Birmingham that at
that time this would help Connor. So my feeling was that that
trip made the difference .
35
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me skip back to something that I asked over
a moment ago and that is, you told me how you think Pitts felt
about Shuttlesworth, what about Ware?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I'm guessing. My speculation is that Ware
was really upset with and hostile towards Shuttlesworth.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You don't have any direct recollection?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No, no direct recollection.
ANDREW M. MANIS: But that's your general impression?
REVEREND JIMERSON: That would be my speculation.
ANDREW M. MANIS: We are about to run out of time so let me just
ask you other instances where you were able to observe
Shuttlesworth or converse with Shuttlesworth that stick out in
your mind. Are there any? I know that is a rather open ended
sort of question which doesn't help jog your memory in any way.
REVEREND JIMERSON: I'm sure I had to have some personal contacts
with Shuttlesworth in that three years. I do not remember at any
point in which I made any repeated efforts to see him. When
those occasions were, certainly at the point that I invited him
to my office, that he wanted some help from me, we were on a
first name basis, so there had to be some association but it just
simply gone with time and I can't recall. I think it would have
been obvious to him that I supported him. Some of those mass
meetings, any of the mass meetings that I went to probably other
than some white detective, I would be the only white person in
the mass meeting and I am sure that kind of stuff gets
communicated in one way or another. These were Shuttlesworth's
36
meetings .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you have any recollections of his
performances at the -- I hesitate to use that word -- but any
recollections of his performances at the mass meetings?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I really can't recal l. The re is something
about me that remembers that Shuttlesworth was kind of like the
-- I don 't know as I -- I need better vocabulary. There was
something about Shuttlesworth that when he spoke it was kind of
like throwing down the gauntlet . Like "thi s is the way it is
going to be. I say its gonna be that way and that ' s the way its
gonna be." That kind of approach in some things I might have
agreed with but thought it was rather unusual in that kind of
speaking with the authority of "Because I say it, it's gonna
happen. " I think that may be generic to Black Baptists , but, I
think Shuttlesworth had a good dose of that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you have any speculation on where that came
from, from Shuttlesworth or how he developed that?
REVEREND JIMERSON: There could have been some real reasons for
him to feel like he was the only one in town who was doing
anything.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I guess if you ' ve been blown out of bed and
survive to tell it you might take on the kind of authority that
you wouldn ' t have before.
REVEREND JIMERSON: I think, as I say , it puzzles me and its just
a gap , as to why time in Birmingham that I never made it a point
to go and find the leader of the mass meetings and talk with him.
37
ANDREW M. MANIS: It could be because he lived in Cincinnati at
the time.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well, that, I guess I really until now I
hadn1t remembered. But I do remember now when you speak about it
when he moved to Cincinnati.
ANDREW M. MANIS: It was just about the time you moved there.
REVEREND JIMERSON: The time I got to Birmingham, he went to
Cincinnati. Because I made it a point of going around looking up
people. I would get names from somebody and they give me other
people. I really spent an awful lot of time going from person to
person both in the white community but even more particularly in
the Black community.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you have any other recollections of what the
Black community felt about Shuttlesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: My general impression was that the Black
community really respected him. I think he had high marks with
the Blacks.
ANDREW M. MANIS: How would you, just in your general evaluation
of some of these leaders that you dealt with personally and
observed, particularly those years that you were in Birmingham,
how would you evaluate Fred Shuttlesworth and his significance or
his importance to the Movement?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I would think without any question that he
was the one person and it would be hard to find anyone who would
be a close second to him and his leadership in Birmingham. I
think with good reason the other factions of Birmingham, none of
38
these factions had the primary goal of getting people involved in
making any change . They were more i nto power and l eadership l ike
a Black Baptist minister ' s group which in normal business was
quite different than Civil Rights . I think without any question
what happened in Birmingham, Shuttlesworth was the key.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Just to round out this interview with the few
seconds we have left , what led to your leaving Birmingham?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I was simply battle-weary, worn out ,
frazzled. Most of the time during that three years, there was
constant telephone harassment , several threats on my life and it
was just being weary. Also , I would have left a few months
earl ier if I had had a job. I was ready for some escape for
several months. But I got to Birmingham just at the time I
had agreed to go before the freedom riders were beaten up and got
there just after that. Then when the Ci vil Rights Act of ' 64 was
passed , that was in June or so and it seemed appropriate for the
good of the Council for somebody else to come in. So whether it
was good for the Council, it was good for me to get out.
ANDREW M. MANIS: And you went to what position?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I went to Kalamazoo College as Director of
Student Service Program whi ch was putting students on the job .
Kalamazoo College was looking for an American Baptist minister
who had some concerns about social issues so they found me.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I 'm glad you got out of there safely and I
appreciate your taking some time to reminisce with me this
afternoon. It's been a good experience for me and I know you
39
filled in some gaps even though you probably think you 're memory
wasn't good enough .
REVEREND JIMERSON: One of my regrets is that I'm not very good
at citing records and one of those times when you get frustrated
over records that you haven't properly filed, it's easier to
throw them out than it is to file them. I threw out logs that I
kept in Birmingham.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, I'm very sorry t o hear that but I'm
grateful for letting me take some of your time this afternoon.
40

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Holding.Institution

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Full Text

This is an interview with the Reverend Norman Jimerson , a r etired
minister in Washington , D. C. Reverend Jimerson was Director of
Al abama Council on Human Re l ations in Birmingham , Alabama , during
the height of the Civil Rights movement. He often served as an
unofficial liaison between the Black and white communities in
Birmingham. This interview discusses his recollections and
perspectives on the Civil Rights Movement in Birmingham with
parti cular attention to his own role as well as that of the
Reverend Fred L. Shuttlesworth. This interview was conducted at
Reverend Jimerson 1s home in Washington , D. C. on June 13 , 1989.
The interviewer was Andrew M. Manis.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Reverend Jimerson , can you begin by giving me
your background in terms of where you grew up, and your
educational and religious background up until the time you moved
to Birmi ngham.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Sure . I grew up in Corning, New York. I
grew up in the American Baptist Church. I went to a conservative
Baptist church for two years just after my dad died when I was
ten years old. And then we moved back into the more liberal wing
of the American Baptist churches. In high school I considered
being a minister , at the beginning of high school days. My
father went into politics and I ended up in engineering. In 1940
I went to the University of Michigan School of Engineering . In
1943 I went into the army and served in the South Pacific as a
first lieutenant. In 1947 I was released from the army hospital
and got married in September and went back to the University of
1
Michigan and at that time I decided to go into the ministry.
Then I went to Andove r - Newton Theol ogical School from 194 9 t o
1952. I was ordained and went to a small community church with
no denominational affiliation i n New Hampshire. From there in
1955 I went to a good school at Boston Un i versity and knew a
couple of professors who had known Ki ng . We talked a little bit
about King. Not a lot . At that poi n t I was preparing for work
as a prison chaplain , and I went t o Virgi nia in Petersburg a s
chaplain at the federal r eformatory in 1957 . In 157 mass ive
resistance was underway in Virginia . Race was an i ssue not
touched by the white churches. I led a couple of workshops fo r
the Pe t e rsburg Ministerial Association on race r elations. At my
job as chaplin at the federal reformatory, which was integrated,
it was very clear that I would jeopardize my job if I was in
favor of segr egation . The past ors in local churches were in
jeopardy i f they acknowledged integration was appropriate. So ,
in that r o l e t hen , it was ve r y safe to tackle a topic like that .
The first year we had a fellow from the Southern Regional Council
come as a speaker and the next year a minister from Ri chmond came
a l ong with someone from the Southern Regional Council . At that
point they told me that they were having a hard time find i ng
anybody who would be willing t o be the Direc t or of the Alabama
Council on Human Relations .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I can imagine .
REVEREND JIMERSON: Tha t was back in the fall of 19 60 , Bob Hughes
had been the director of the Alabama Council up until about June
2
but I have a feeling it was more like later in the fall , in
September that he left t hat job and became a mi ssionary in
Southern Rhodesia . So over a period of just a few months I
negotiated and thought t hat maybe God's calling was for me to do
what nobody else wanted to do, and that was to go to Alabama .
[Laughs1 . So I went down in May of 1961 for an interview for the
job . The [people I) wor ked with at the reformatory made all
kinds of objecti ons and had hosti lity t owards me for taking a job
like that -- asked me what color roses I wanted for my cemetary
grave . When I got down there I found that there were two or
three young fellows in their twenties who were interested in the
job . So I went ahead and interviewed for the job but my
understanding was tha t I went down because they couldn ' t find
anybody. And so, not to make too long a story but I called David
Vann , the chair of the committee. Many times I couldn ' t reach
him to tell h i m that I was not interested . So [later) I did
decide to accept the job . I interviewed for the job a week
before t he Freedom Riders were beaten up i n Birmingham on
Mothe r 's Day . It was in t hat period just after I interviewed
that the bus was burned i n Anniston . I don ' t know the exact date
but i t was r i ght near Mother ' s Day in 1961.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Bot h occurred on Mother ' s Day , May 1 4 .
REVEREND J IMERSON: So then they was preparing to go to
Birmi ngham on August 1. My resignation was effective July 3 1 at
the federal reformatory. And then we took a trip to Birmingham
and found a house . When we got back from Birmingham the r ealtor
3
called me up and said that the earnest money that I had put down
was sent back to me and that they were not about to sell a house
to a communist or somebody working for the communists which was
the Alabama Council on Human Relations. So he said, "I don ' t
know if you know it but that is a communist organization . We
can't do anything with anybody who is working with it . " Instead
of fighting that as an issue, we did hire an attorney, Charles
Morgan , t o guide us as we prepared as a family . The Council
hired him to guide me and my family in whatever else was
necessary to move into Alabama . Morgan ' s great laughter was that
he ' d never work for somebody who was about to move into the state
and might be arrested at the state line. Morgan has a great gift
for exaggeration . But anyway we took another trip to Birmingham
and at that point we tal ked to David Vann and Roger Hansen and
several other people to try to figure out where would be a good
location to - - bring a family of four children. It was decided
that it would be much safer physically , there would be much less
danger of damage to the home if we lived in a middle class , upper
middle class white neighborhood. So we thought about some
locations in Birmingham but they thought that it didn ' t have
quite the class . And people thought the Klan would be a little
more accessible to certain parts of Birmingham than Homewood .
So, for those kinds of considerations we moved to Saulter Road
just off Route 31 going over the hill South towards Montgomery.
ANDREW M. MANIS: This didn't increase your misgivings about
going there?
4
REVEREND JIMERSON: It t ook me several months to decide that
that ' s what I really needed to do. No , I had a very strong sense
that this is what I was supposed to do . There wasn ' t any
question about it and the question was to do as much good as you
could. Psychologically I prepared myself by saying that there
would probably one chance in a thousand o r ten thousand that
anything would happen to me. I had known a lot of stories of
Blacks who were mutilated or murdered in Birmingham but very few
whites. At some time I might have had trouble thinking of a
white person in the last ten years that had been harmed so I felt
relatively safe.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Tell me about the beginnings of your work there
after you got settled.
DR. JIMERSON: I started August 1. There was an office a lready
set up in the Comer Building, twelfth floor. The secretary,
whose sympathies mayor may not have been with the Council but
like a working- poor white person who needed a job and was
content to be in the office and kept herself busy when I was out
of town reading comic books that she stored in her desk. Finally
we decided that she was not that competent and we fired her.
Then there was some real suspicion that there could be a real
problem by somebody who was not sympathetic to what we were
doing , who knew the office, knew what I was doing. So there was
this constant l evel of fear. She was of almost no use in helping
me figure out what the Council had been or was doing. So we made
a request of David Vann and other members of the Board , David and
5
there was a Reverend Wilson, a Black minister nearing retirement
age in the sixties , who would come by the office. Interestingly
enough , I have always been the kind of person that when I am
getting ready for a job I ask anybody I can find "What would you
do if you had this job?" I remember being at a Human Relations
Workshop for two weeks at Fisk University and I asked Thurgood
Marshall and he said he ' d get the hell out which seemed kind of
blunt but not he l pful. Interesting side l ight. But as i de from
getting out everybody , I talked to seemed to say that unless
there was an overpowering economic interest to change , racial
attitudes in Birmingham would probably never change. I didn ' t
like to believe it but I decided that probably was right . In the
meantime when the use of moral persuasion and commitment to work
alongsi de the Blacks to work for recognition as human beings
seemed appropriate.
ANDREW M. MANIS: In Chuck Morgan ' s book he mentions that first
you attempted to involve yourself in a Baptist church in
Birmingham and didn ' t find a particularly warm welcome . What
church was that and can you tell me something of the welcome you
did receive there?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well , I guess when I first moved to
Birmingham , the first Sunday I looked up a fellow who had been in
seminary a year ahead of me at Newton at Boston and I can ' t think
of his name at the moment. He was pastor of the Vestavia Hills
Baptist Church. He considered himself a great liberal who was
going to integrate that church. It would probably take twenty
6
years or two generations , but he was going to integrate it . I
got there and he we lcomed us and the second Sunday I guess -­well,
he kept urging us t o join the church . The second Sunday he
said he was going t o be out of town and wanted to know if I' d
preach . It was about the fourth Sunday I was there and I decided
there was no point in starting out with my thoughts about
segregation and integration , but I spoke in the morning about
Christ- centered p r eaching and in the evening a simil ar theme . He
decided tha t it would l ook like he was trying to hide something
if he did not put in the bulletin that my job was Director of the
Alabama Council on Human Relations . The next week he started
getti ng f l ack from people who had heard about that group and
thought of it as a communist group and so then a Sunday School
teacher called me up and he wanted me to come and see him. He
told me that I was like Hitler and also that he thought Hitler ' s
ideas were right whi ch was a big contradiction . But it was very
confused .
ANDREW M. MANIS: What connection did he see between you and
Hitl er?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Just somebody you don ' t like. I never did
figure out why he thought I was like Hitler . But it was very
obvious that he admired Hitler's racial attitudes . And he
thought that Hitler was right on a lot of what he did . With that
acknowledged associati on , then I was open to expect anything from
him . What I got from him was a warm welcome for me and my family
to leave the church.
7
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did he put it?
REVEREND JIMERSON: That this wasn 't the place we really
belonged.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You never did join the church?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did you find -- you went from there to which
Presbyterian church?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Let me just say a curious sidelight of how
the dynamics worked in the church. The deacons were going to
vote on whether I should join the church or not.
ANDREW M. MANIS: This was before?
REVEREND JIMERSON: This was after I preached. I t was the third
week I was in the church.
ANDREW M. MANIS: But that's unusual that they would do that
without your having walked the aisle and applied for membership .
REVEREND JIMERSON: We had applied for membership. We applied
for membership and the deacons were going to vote and in churches
where I have been the pastor would just automaticall y welcome you
as a new member and present you to the deacons instead of the
deacons voting. In some churches I guess it was the custom for
the deacons to vote . I remember there was some confusion in the
congregati on , consternation and hostility that somebody working
in human relations - - at that time in Birmingham it was
considered by most people in Birmingham as ipso facto communist
as a derogatory term not knowing anything about what communism
was but as a term of hatred. The deacons came into a meeting and
8
they spent a long time d i scussing and debating this. Finally
they decided that I be asked to leave the church . The vote ended
up instead of us becoming members that they would not ask us to
leave the church. So , with that we looked for another church and
there was a Presbyterian minister encouraging us to come to his
church . He said he needed Sunday School teachers. It was a poor
little section of Birmingham South of Homewood, North of
Homewood, toward Birmingham . So we went there. Then in about
three weeks he came to the house and he spent an hour and a half
before he got to the point. When he got to the point , he did it
so clumsily that I didn't even get the point, my wife did . What
he was there for was to invite us not to come to his church
anymore, just to attend . So we found a large Presbyterian church
in Mountain Brook. Tom Duncan was considered moderate. We
attended there. My wife found a real home there. I became quite
uneasy that Tom was not addressing the issue at all. I didn't
expect him to address the issue much or in anything other than
vague general terms. So then we went to a Pilgrim Congregational
church in Mountain Brook. Because of the color of the roof they
called it our Blue Heaven. That church was about evenly divided.
It took one vote which was 51- 49 on whether a meeting of
Congregationalists -- a meeting of the demonimation -- could meet
in their church . The issue was that there were some Black
congregationalists around. So we ended up there and stayed there
and were there near the end of our years . I think you had
another question.
9
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, you answered it when you began to talk
about the sort of transition into and then out of the
Presbyterian . Did you find, other than David Vann and Chuck
Morgan, did you find any white Christians who were open to what
you were doing?
REVEREND JIMERSON: They were few and far between but there were
some. David Vann introduced me to some young lawyers and George
Taylor was a young l awyer who occasionally , I didn't have a lot
of contact with him, but he was very much interested in what I
was doing and very supportive personally. Publicly he would not
be identified with me nor was David Vann interested in being seen
on the streets in Birmingham with me. It was that kind of
climate. It's a little difficult to remember that it was all
that bad. In contacts I had a good warm personal friendship with
Ed -- who was the pastor of the First Presbyterian Church in
downtown Birmingham -- Ed Ramage. My efforts in Birmingham from
the beginning were to quickly establish a rapport with the Black
community, but my work was primarily with the white community.
Although I spent a lot of time, I spent about half of my time or
more in the Black community to know what was going on and to do
things like crisis intervention with Black, if tragedy was
happening to Blacks, like if a Black was murdered, like calling
the family. My job was to research so that I would know what was
happening in Birmingham and across the state . Primarily the
demonstrations brought it out but at that point a lot of people
from the press would call me up and I would give them background
10
data and then describe various people they might want to talk to
get first hand information about the people involved . So there
were a very few whites that were sympathetic. There were more in
the Unitarian church than any other church. A lot of people were
in the Unitarian church simply on the matter of race as distinct
from theology. That church was known and actively involved in
supporting human decency, human rights and to the extent that in
probably about '63 there was a representative from the State
Legislature -- the State Legislature had sort of a committee on
anti- communist activities or some such title, and they had a spy
at the Unitarian Church to see what was going on. Paid informer.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You mentioned that your work was primarily with
the white community but that you were also were involved with
developing rapport with the Black community. Really about the
time you moved to Birmingham Shuttlesworth was moving out, at
least in terms of his pastorate. What was Birmingham saying
about Shuttlesworth when you got there, both the whites that you
encountered, and among those whites, both the liberal types like
David Vann and the others who ran you out of various churches?
How were they responding? What did they think of someone like
Shuttlesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: The liberal whites I would say were
generally , well, I guess liberal and moderates would be the same
in two categories. Those that were actually taking some risk of
being known as active in Civil Rights, I think there was a very
clear admiration and appreciation for Shuttlesworth. David Vann
11
types were more of the attitude that Shuttlesworth was
unnecessarily causing trouble, like when he got beat up with
chains, that he had provoked this and that they could make
progress faster wi thout that ki nd of Black agitation.
ANDREW M. MANIS : What did you think of their viewpoints?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I felt that Shuttlesworth was a real hero and
anybody getti ng beaten up by whites because of his stand on Civil
Rights was an acknowledged l eader that earned respect.
Shuttlesworth was kind of a loner and I 'm not clear as to why I
never had a lot of contact with Shuttlesworth. I did talk with
J. L. Ware at [Trinity] Baptist church and with a lot of other
guys and I don ' t know if I real l y looked up Shuttlesworth for an
interview. I respected him. I went to several mass meetings
which Shuttlesworth organized and really appreciated and felt
that thi s was the one sign of movement in the Black community,
because of , well, I think it could have been any night , but it
was Monday night meetings. So even at those meetings it would be
like King woul d come through or other speakers and still never
really had an interview with Shuttl esworth except during t he
demonstrations Shuttlesworth came to me for something, support or
something.
ANDREW M. MANIS: In ' 63?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah, and I remember as we tried to figure
out where we would meet .
ANDREW M. MANIS: And you can ' t remember when during the
demonstrations this occurred?
12
REVEREND JIMERSON: I can l t . It was during a period when there
was a lot of police surveillance . About 300 cruisers , s t ate
police , came in from al l over the state.
ANDREW M. MANIS : Would that have been.
REVEREND JIMERSON: That would have been , -- I don ' t connect my
interview with Shuttlesworth with that event. It was i n the
period when the demons t rat ions were going on and .
ANDREW M. MANIS: If the s t ate troopers were in from Montgomery ,
is that what you ' re saying?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No , I 'm saying that would be in the period of
time that, in that period of months , but it was not that
particular week. It was not this week. I don ' t tie it in with
that event. I think i t was earlier in the demonstrations . Now I
can ' t remember what Shuttl esworth wanted to talk to me about .
But there was some discussion about where we would meet. Finally
it was decided we woul d meet at 11 :00 after some meeti ng that he
had . So I said to him , "The only p l ace to go is in my offi ce in
the Comer Buil d i ng ." At n i ght the front door was open and I
would have had access to my key. I am trying to think of whether
the elevator operator was on duty that night. I think she was
not . I think it was being operated automatically. The next
morning I remember she said to me -- she ' d always been very
friendly and I had always been very nice to her and spoken to
her. But we never sai d anything about what I did .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Was she ...
REVEREND JIMERSON: Elevator operator , a Black elevator operator .
13
So the Black elevator operator, her eyes lit up you know when she
saw me and I thought "Well, you really are somebody" and she said
"I understand you had Shuttlesworth in your office last night."
I said, "Yes, as a matter of fact I did . How did you find out?"
She said, "The police came by and they told me."
ANDREW M. MANIS: She was impressed with that?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah, she had a special sparkle for me now
that she knew that I was associated with Shuttlesworth.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did she offer an opinion of her own?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No, but it was very clear to me that she
really admired Shuttlesworth and anybody that would associate
with him.
ANDREW M. MANIS: That's interesting, but you don ' t remember any
of the discussion?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I really don ' t. It was something about
strategy and he wanted to confer with me about strategy and
getti ng information out, but I really don't know.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me move then to something a bit more
specific and earlier than this. Just to set this up, according
to one of the letters that you wrote as a report which I have
seen around February of '62 when the Miles College students were
contemplating demonstrations, selective buying campaign,
apparently you contacted Dr. Lucius Pitts who was then President
of Miles College and sort of served as liaison between him and
some white business leaders and they met and I assume you met
with them over the next few weeks. What can you tell me about
14
some of those meetings?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I remember setting up some meetings with
Black leaders and white communi ty leaders. But I had put it in a
different time frame in my memory . But on the occasions that
and it probably was Pitts ' s suggestion -- people like the
suffragan bishop , Murray , of the Episcopal church and there would
be people like Ed Ramage , although I don ' t know specifically if
he was there , but these were downtown pastors, got together with
people l ike Sid Symer , who was President , Birmingham Realty, to
talk over issues and what they were about . Meetings were very
productive in that there was some acknowledgement by the whites
there that things needed to change and I think it was a learning
experi ence for both sides to get acquainted and know what the
task was and that the whites were going to make a little bit of
progress -- enough to mollifythe Blacks and that the Blacks were
going to make some progress in the situation represented by these
whites that represented economic and religious business interest.
So I remember, for exampl e, in the meetings just little
sidelights -- A. D. King , looked at his watch, you know, and they
were going ok. And Smyer said, "Hey , I agreed to be the last one
to speak and so I want everyone of you here while I am speaking.
You can take all the time you want but don ' t decide you are going
to leave before I speak. " Of course, Syd Smyer was the kind of
leader who was accustomed to that kind of attention . I guess one
of the other things was that they were just interested in getting
together. You place this at February '62; it was April of ' 63
15
that the demonstrations began. There were demonstrations
scheduled for October of ' 62 by King , SCLC . There were a lot of
contacts. About that time Lucius Pitts , President of Miles ,
became the President of the Alabama Council on Human Relations ,
and he was interested in supporting me in my efforts in any way
that he could and also I was interested in pumpint his brain as
to how I as an individual on the board could best proceed . We
had a l ot of good meeti ngs . I remember one night there was a
threat at Miles. Somebody had threatened to shoot in with a
shotgun or and actually fired shots into the campus. For
circumstances like that we would get together in the late evening
after all of our appointments were cleared . I remember about
midnight being in his office one time and he put his arm around
me and said "You ' re rea l ly a Black hearted guy." He said,
"You ' re a great mixer. You're Black or white but you ' re neither.
All the Blacks can see when they talk to you is white and all the
whites can see is Black ."
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me get back to those meetings before I ask
another question. You said you felt like both sides learned a
good deal.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Urn- hum!
ANDREW M. MANIS: What did they learn? What did the whites
learn? What did the Blacks learn? I guess that the whites had
more to learn than the Blacks did about what the other side was
thinking, but I 'm interested in what both sides learned from your
prospective .
16
REVEREND JIMERSON: I guess it was -- what the Blacks had to
learn was the attitudes and feelings of the ones who wanted to
see progress but were afraid about how it was going to be
extremely cautious in any progress that could be made and yet
knowing that there had to be some progress for economic reasons.
Sid Smyer was a clearcut example of the thing that I had been
told ahead of time which was Birmingham's business was hurting
economically and there would be any shift for change. I think
that the Blacks had to learn that, had to take into consideration
who the opposition was, opposition in terms of negotiations. We
knew the opposition was the Klan with chains and all that stuff.
What impressed me most was that during -- I think we only had two
discussions. The discussions were called off I guess by the
whites but what the Blacks kept emphasizing was that they had
been denied their freedom for 200 years, 300 years, and that they
wanted all their freedom now. It really frustrated me in
thinking that there was no way that everything was going to be
turned around upside down, but there had to be some steps. The
whites had to learn was that the Blacks were not going to be
slowed down and mollified with some token little gestures. But
then as David Vann put it, which may have been at least one part
of the truth is that the whites knew that they had to find ways
of helping the Blacks achieve some measurable visible results.
So which later now, now we are jumping about a year into the
negotiations but eventually it ended the demonstrations which
started in April and you know better than I do when they ended.
17
ANDREW MANIS: It was May 10 when the truce was announced.
REVEREND JIMERSON: In those weeks it became the Blacks and
whites sitting down together working out how they could present
enough change that the Black community would feel that there was
some success and how the Blacks would interpret to the community
the significance of some of these small visible tokens. One of
the strange things is, I was never included in the negotiations,
although I kept in touch with both Blacks and whites about what
was going on. [PauseJ. I'm jumping from that picture of the
meetings with the white leadership, another time when the white
leadership got together was when King asked me through I guess it
was Abernathy, he called me up and said that King wanted me to
get the white ministers in Birmingham together and he would talk
with them and bring some of his leaders. On this occasion he
brought his brother, A. D., he brought other Black ministers,
probably Ware, Shuttlesworth. There were six or seven white
religious leaders.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you know who they were?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Bishop Murray and my mind really gives out in
trying to think who those other were. Ed Ramage would have been
a logical person. I can't really be sure that he was there but I
would have strong feeling that he would have to be, and there was
a fellow at the Baptist church, Stallings. I would think [EarlJ
Stallings was there. I'm sure there were a couple of
Presbyterians.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You've named three who were among those who
18
wrote a letter to King whi ch resulted in "Letter from Birmingham
Jail " which is very interesting. Tell me about that meeting.
REVEREND JIMERSON: That meeting was really interesting in that
people who had been very liberal, well, liberal in the sense of
really wanting to see something happen to advance human relations
I 'm talking about whites like Bishop Murray , who was not out
in front, was not saying much, but wanted to see some progress,
how at this point, they became antagonisti c towards King and the
demonstrations. In this meeting I can ' t place in terms of the
other events during the demonstrations , but this took place I
think the first week of the demonstrations .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Before King was arrested?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah, before King was arrested. This had to
have taken place before the Blacks went to white churches on
Easter Sunday . At that meeting it was King trying to -- he
called me . He wanted me to help get the people together. He was
trying to interpret and explain what his philosophy was and why
they were having demonstrati ons . Two people were upset because
it was personally impinging on them . Outside forces were putting
pressure on them that they didn ' t like. That meant that white
people in the congregations who, as the Blacks would say, want
progress but let my grandchildren deal with it, they were putting
pressure on the ministers. So it was an interchange -- maybe
this was one of the few times that there were no visible results
from King's speech -- talk. I would speculate -- there was one
very interesting experience in that meeting of religious leaders,
19
both Black and white, where Sid Smyer said to the group "Don ' t
you forget now, I know the Black community is divided. I went to
this person and I went to this person and I went to this person"
and he named four or five names and I am sure it was Reverend
Shuttlesworth who said "Tell me, Mr. Smyer, you made the mistake
of skipping one person , the one person that is important in
this. "
ANDREW MANIS: Meaning himself?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah. "You didn ' t talk to me." He was the
one who was running the mass meetings. He was the one who was
doing it. As a matter of fact, it may not be too far off when
King came to Birmingham and was seen negotiating with
Shuttlesworth instead of being with the Black Baptist or any
other group. It Shuttlesworth's tht he negotiated with.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did Smyer make a response to this comment by
Shuttlesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Good question. I think his response only was
that out of total frustration , that he had tried to deal with him
but I don't remember other than just kind of being annoyed that
Shuttlesworth would say you talked to everybody except the one
who counted.
ANDREW M. MANIS: I recognize that I am asking you to remember
conversations almost 25 years ago but as best you can piece
together any exchanges that occurred would be helpful to me to
flesh out that meeting because it sounds like a very significant
one. Can you tell me something of what King said? I would
20
assume what he said sounded a l o t like what later appeared in the
"Letter from Birmingham Jail."
REVEREND JIMERSON: No , I cannot remember any specific content.
In general his purpose and his theme was to explain why they had
to have demonstrations.
ANDREW M. MANIS: So his theme was why they had to have
demonstrations at that time?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Right, why it had to be now. Why we can't
wait.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You mentioned there was no visible kind of
response in terms of converting their viewpoints , I assume that ' s
what you meant?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Other than that exchange with Smyer, can you
call anything else that was said in the meeting once it was
thrown open to actual conversation?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No , I really can ' t. I did have in my mind
that that was a very significant event and I guess one of the few
times or the only time that King ever asked me to do anything.
Let me just mention in the Black community , I had been over to
Reverend Ware ' s house two or three times. Normally I went
without appointments . I can ' t remember why I would not have
tried to make an appointment . Probably I had an appointment with
Reverend Ware. But I went over to his house and the place was
all locked up and closed down tight. It was late in the
afternoon and it seemed really deserted. This happened to me two
21
or three times. I explained this , I talked about this to some of
the Black people that I knew well and they said that that would
be typical for people in the Black community. A white person
would come to their door, they would turn off the TV, turn out
the lights and just be like nobody ' s home. Now, what did
surprise me was that Reverend Ware did invite me to preach at his
church one Sunday.
ANDREW M. MANIS: He did?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Urn- hum! The most remarkable thing about that
was just my understanding of the Black culture , getting there
twenty minutes early, of course, like I always do , being met by
Reverend Ware , we met in his office which was just off the
platform and they were singing and taking up collections and it
got eleven o'clock and nothing happened. He said, "No, just sit
still." So at about twenty to twelve o'clock we went out and the
service went on until one o ' clock and then at one o'clock it came
time to preach . I preached twenty minutes. It may have been
quarter to one until five after . Then there was an offering and
some more singing. The remarkable thing about that was it just
seemed unusual that as President of the Black Baptist Ministers '
Association, he was the only one who invited me to preach. I
visited a lot of Black churches, just to be known and to be
supporti ve and to learn and find out what it was all about.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you take that as a sign of mistrust of you?
REVEREND JIMERSON: That I wasn't invited to preach? No , not
really. I took that as more like there would be no reason for
22
any white person to preach or for that matter, any person to
preach, other than when vacations
ANDREW M. MANIS: Were they skeptical at first of your work?
REVEREND JIMERSON: There may have been skepticism but this never
became apparent to me. What was apparent to me was there was
just overwhelming excitement and appreciation for any white
person to do the job that I was doing. This came through for the
first couple of years during the demonstrations, I guess it was
when I first met the first Black -- when I had contact with the
first Black Muslim in Alabama. I had known Black Muslims in
prison and this was an "Every white man is a devil" attitude.
The only thing that came near skepticism about my work was people
in "Snick" [SNCC or the Student Nonviolent Coordinating
Committee], who had become very disenchanted with King's
approach. I guess in general it was a disenchantment with
nonviolence. This was near the end of the period. Let me speak
about an event that took place and I don't know why Shuttlesworth
was not on my mind at a meeting of the Black Baptist Ministerial
Association about the second week of demonstrations. King had
been able to work through to get an invitation to speak to that.
J. L. Ware was distinctly opposed to the demonstrations. He was
the president, which carried considerable influence on other
Black Baptist ministers. It is amazing how much influence a
pastor has in a congregation in the Black community but also how
much, the basis, I guess, how seriously they take the president
in a group. So Black Baptists were distinct in not being
23
supportive of the demonstrations. I went over to hear King ' s
presentati on . King gave a marvelous ta l k . At the end of the
t a lk, the Baptist Association agreed to support the
demonstrations, which meant that Ki ng had t aken the leadership of
the particular group at that particular time away f r om their
president. The onl y recour se the president had to do was move
a l ong with it . When they are going off i n o t her directions you
have to r un and get ahead of them. So , J. L. Ware , well the few
t i mes I ever talked wi th Ki ng , I had lunch wi th him at the Gaston
Motel right after t hat . We had set that up some time ahead .
John L . Drew came by and sai d to King , "Marvelous t alk , marvelous
talk , it really took t he leadershi p away from the president ."
ANDREW M. MANIS : How did King r espond to that?
REVEREND J I MERSON: Oh , he thanked h i m for h i s compl iments.
ANDREW M. MANIS: He just ignored the part about taking the
l eadershi p away from t he leader?
REVEREND J IMERSON: He had no interest in that other t han
persuading him to join the demonstrations . I think in King ' s
response there was somet hing about " It ' s good to have him on
board."
ANDREW M. MANIS: Is it fair to say that Ware went a l ong wi th it
because he more or l ess had to in order to retai n his l eadership
but he remai ned hal f heart ed in his own personal support of the
demonstrati ons?
REVEREND J I MERSON: NOw, I do not know . I never ta l ked with Ware
about that decis i on. But , of course, tha t would have been a
24
touchy thing for a Black or anybody to talk to him about. I
would speculate that Ware was caught in the middle. He came down
on one side where he also had some reasons to join in supporting
the demonstrations. Of course you realize that there was a
tremendous amount of pressure on the Black preacher not to
support demonstrations because this would attract the attention
of the Klan. And specifically , back when the Sixteenth Street
Church was bombed John Porter told me and others that his real
problem was to keep the people in his church supporting the
demonstrations. He was trying to say that we ' ve already lost
four and their lives would be in vain , their deaths will be in
vain , if we don ' t continue. If we stop now because they killed
fou r , t hen what we have been doing is down the drain. When I say
that, most of the t i me I was of the strong opinion that Bl ack
ministers, whether they thought someone else was taking their
power away from them or not , they had a lot of support and a lot
of pressure from the congregation to be in favor of Civil Rights.
So it was more the exception that there were pressures not to be
involved.
ANDREW M. MANIS : And that seemed pretty obvious to you as you
observed it?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Yeah .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Since you d i d have a fairly good opportunity to
know both Ware and Pitts and interact with them, in conversations
with them, did they express misgivings about Fred Shuttlesworth
and his leadership style or any sort of rivalry with him? I say
25
that because I've got down a quote from one of your reports where
you were talking about a meeting in which you felt such a meeting
would have a wholesome effect if these members of the Black
community would work together "instead of spending so much of
their time and energy fretting over who is going to be the
leader. " That's a quote from you.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Let me go around that question for just a
moment. One of the things that was very apparent was that after
the demonstrations had been cancelled in October of 1962, I was
told by different people that the only person that King was in
touch with was Shuttlesworth. The disunity or the quarreling
over who's going to be the leader in the Back community was more
of a general tone or general statement then that I had specific
instances that I could tie it to. Lucius Pitts, I am sure it
was, who said that when there is so little progress being made
and there are several different groups and several individuals
powerful, a Black preacher for example in a big congregation
would be a powerful person, that then it was really a dogfight to
get some credit and there was so little to get credit for. I
think of Pitts as being one of the more intelligent planners that
I knew and one who was deeply committed to anything that made
progress. Probably one of the best strategists I knew, so that
he would be more of describing to me how the struggle for power
within the Black community was going on. Probably Pitts was the
only Black that I knew of that --well there were a few lawyers,
Black lawyers. He would have been the primary selection for my
26
information about the struggles in the Black community . What
intrigues me is that while there was this struggle. That was not
an important part of the Birmingham struggle. It did not
interfere greatly with the progress being made. I remember there
was a minister [C. Herbert1 Oliver who was taking depositions and
writing up incidents of brutality against Blacks. Police in
uniform, police out of uniform, whites , rednecks , Klan, whatever .
When he had documented over a hundred instances. He continued to
be opposed to the demonstrations. I never really figured out why
or what but he was getting some flack from other Blacks because
he was opposed to it. It never occurred to me even though he was
trying to explain it to me just what he had against it. I can be
s ure that Oliver ' s opposition was not like many of the Bl acks
that were publicly opposed to the demonstrations out of real fear
of what the white community would do. So , of course , in the
Black community there was always the constant struggle. The
maid would go to work and talk about how terrible things were
downtown and the Backs were causing a lot of trouble . Then she
would be one of the l oudest singers at the mass meetings .
ANDREW M. MANIS: You mentioned that Pitts was your best source
for getting a handle on this power struggle within the Black
community. You say you don ' t think it was all that important in
how it affected the issue of progress. From the perspective of a
biographer of one o f the persons involved , it sounds pretty
important. So I am interested in what you learned from Dr.
Pitts. What were his descriptions, his perceptions of that
27
struggle? What was causing it? How much of it had to do with
Shuttlesworth and his personality or his style? In a round about
way of asking , what did he think of Shutt lesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I am going to have to speculate on filling in
gaps in memory. I do not recall other than just some vague
recollections that Pitts addressed on the topic of his attitude
towards Shuttlesworth . The way that I recall this is that Pitts
thought that Shuttlesworth was out there doing something as
distinct from a lot of others who were doing nothing and talking
big. So my impression after twenty- five or thirty years would be
that Pitts had really admired and deeply respected Shuttlesworth ,
and of course , I had the utmost respect for Pitts. If Pitts '
opinion against many o t her dentists , doctors and stuff tha t I
talked with , I would have strong leaning, not that I would always
take Pi tts ' word , but I would have a strong leaning that he had
the most perceptive understanding of what was going on. My
recollections were that Pitts respected and appreciated and
support ed Shuttleswort h .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Did he ever give off and did you ever pick up
any sense of frustration of Shuttlesworth, in spite of
admiration? Perhaps he was frustrated with ways and means that
Shuttlesworth used.
REVEREND JIMERSON: My remembrance was that there may have been
some frustration with Shut tlesworth ' s s t atements and tactics. In
terms of the demonstrations , there was no question that he
strongly supported the demonstrations all the way.
28
ANDREW M. MANIS: From the beginning?
REVEREND JIMERSON : Yeah .
ANDREW M. MANIS: He never had to be converted about it?
REVEREND JIMERSON: There was no ques tion at all where Pitts was
with the . t he vast majority of the Blacks , even those who
were scar ed of their jobs, they might have at times said t o their
white boss that they weren't interested when really they were.
Let me mention the kind of life we lived there . Pitts told me
that he wa nted to find out if his phone was tapped. La ter he
asked me if I had any sources that could find out . But the
students from Miles Co llege we r e down demonstrating and this I
had forgotten had happened l ong before the big demonstrations in
Birmingham . The Mi l es College students were down there and so
Pitts said to somebody, a friend of his, "Now when I call you up
tonight, no matter what I say , you just say ' yes , yes , yes 'lf and
I am not going to say now o r speak to you again about it but
anyway he set it up so that this guy would be getting a phone
call. He said "Don 't forget to be there at noon because that is
when the students are goi ng to be down at the corner of
somewhere . II Nobody was down there except about five police
cruiser s .
ANDREW M. MANIS : Well, that seems to indicate some phone taps
there.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Let me just say something about phone taps.
People kept t el ling me my phone was tapped . They said don't do
anything foolish but you know, I felt like I had to go a head and
29
do my business and so in August of '63 I asked the FBI to check
three phone numbers. At that point I decided that the FBI mayor
may not but they might check to see if the local police were
tapping my phone. Of course one of the curious things that there
is no real answer to is the cooperation between the FBI and the
local police and the southern prejudices of the FBI. But they
told me while I was on vacation that there was an article in the
paper that they found that three phones were tapped. One was
Pitts's home, one was my home, one was my office. So I never
had direct confirmation that it was me but that was close enough.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Your participation in some of the discussions
and meetings between Pitts and Smyer before those October
demonstrations , one in particular in mid-September, just before
the SCLC had its convention in Birmingham, there was a meeting
Sunday morning at 9:00 according to one of your reports where
basically someone indicated to Smyer that he was going to have to
deal with Shuttlesworth. Does that ring a bell that you can
reconstruct or narrate that for me? Not necessarily that
specific meeting but the general meetings held at that time.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well, the content of that meeting. I
remember meeting in that building or near there where the SCLC
convention was. In general there was a real problem to convince
the whites that there would be change. Smyer and others who knew
about the bad image of Birmingham and wanted to protect their
business interests, still had real difficulty with understanding
that there was going to have to be some real recognition, there
30
had to be significant change, visible no matter how token, but
there had to be some v i s ible changes. And there was real
reluctance on the whites to dea l with this . Now this, I 'm
speculating here that in the context of what you tell me that
Smyer would have , as I knew the dynamics of the situation, would
have had real difficulty in accepting the fact that Shuttlesworth
and the demonstrations was an event that they had to deal with.
At that point, if t hey kept loud enough criticism that they
wouldn't happen. The Birmingham News was strongly editorializing
that this was the most terrible thing that could ever happen , the
demonstrations in Birmingham. And then during the demonstrations
the whites kept feeling that, the ones who were now involved in
wanting to see some change, were stil l try ing to hang onto the
notion that the Blacks would run out of steam and the
demonstrations would fade away without any significant changes.
So there was more -- we would quiet the Blacks by riding out the
demonstrations , not making any change , not making any concessions
but that it would just wear off and things would get back to
normal and there would be less agitation because Blacks know they
can 't do anything . So it was that smugness or that certainty
that there wouldn't have to be any change . It really was -- as
the demonstrations go through I think probably what you have come
across would indicate, as Vann said and others that the only
thing that has really convinced the white community to really
negotiate and make some substantive changes in the negotiations
was the fact that the jails were just overloaded and getting more
31
crowded all the time.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me just mention a couple of other incidents
that took place during those years and you can tell me if you
have any particular recollections about what took place in those
incidents and how those might have affected you. The SCLC
convention of September '62 itself -- did you attend or
participate in any way and what were your perceptions of that
event as far as Birmingham was concerned?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well, I did attend some of the meetings and I
did so with some fear and trepidation because I was now under
injunction by the state and I had a trial coming up in October
it had to be October '62 for planning and participating in
demonstrations in Talladega, and so I was very concerned, and my
lawyer, Chuck Morgan, was very concerned that I not be seen and
identified with "the known communist agitators" who were involved
in Talladega. But I went anyway because I thought it was very
important to know what was going on and be a part of it. I
recall that there was great excitement about -- in the meeting.
It was very exciting. People were excited and then I can only
speculate in terms of the timing that had to be in the big pep
rally just before launching demonstrations in Birmingham in
October.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you remember Shuttlesworth doing anything
particularly significant or impressive in any of those meetings
at the convention? He was more or less hosting.
REVEREND JIMERSON: That's right. I had forgotten that. It
32
would have to be . Shuttlesworth was the host as the ACM, HI or
whatever .
ANDREW M. MANIS: I tend to call it just simply the Alabama
Christian Movement because it takes me less time to do that than
it does to remember the initials.
REVEREND JIMERSON: So obvi ously it was Shuttlesworth ' s show . It
doesn't have to be in my remembrance which is pretty poor about
that event . About a l l I remember about it i s that it was a t ime
of great excitement and the Blacks were sure there was going to
be some progress and they were on the right track and i nto some
demonstrations that would really make a change . Let me share
with you something that I ' ve shared with a few people . One of
the strangest things that I ever did was to be the messenger that
changed the date of the demonstrations . Let me take just a
minute . Davis Vann in August had some preprimary or primary had
set up card tables gett ing signatures to change the form of city
government. That e l ect ion was coming up in November. The more
September came a l ong , it was known that King had decided to have
demonstrations in October . The strategists that were list eni ng
to David Vann were rea l ly convinced that their efforts at getting
rid of Bull Connor would be totally eliminated if the
demonstrations took place just before the election , that Bull
Connor would be able to work that to his advantage and maintain
his position in power. So David Vann said to me, "Jim, you got
to go to Atlanta and talk with King and talk him out of having
the demonstrations now. " I kinda laughed. What he said made
33
sense to me. I agreed with the analysis and I am sure I called
on Ed to make appointments with King never having a firm
appointment. I can't imagine I would go without one but when I
got there King was bound up with white reporters from Newsweek
and Time Magazine I guess and New York Times. And also, which
may seem racist, or seem which may seem anti-King, which I don't
want to seem, but it was very difficult for white persons working
in human relations to get an appointment with King. Somehow he
didn't consider that part of his important strategy to work with
whites that were working alongside. Where and how, I don't know,
but I did meet with Wyatt T. Walker at the airport in Atlanta.
By this time Wyatt T. Walker was King's number one lieutenant and
whatever title he went by and based on the fact that Wyatt T.
Walker had been a member of a ministerial association he was one
of two or three Blacks that would come to the white ministerial
groups in Birmingham. It was an integrated group. They could
come but they didn't see any reason to come -- most Blacks. I
had preached in his church and shared communion with him and
assisted him in serving communion in his church. He had never
accepted my invitation to preach at the reformatory but he did
come over and I was able to arrange for Wyatt T. to come over and
speak to the white Baptist church in Hopewell which was most
remarkable that they would have a Black person come and speak.
This was in '59 and '60. So I had a past friendship with Wyatt
T. I told him, I said, "I came here to explain to you the
reasons why the demonstrations should be postponed." His
34
response was, "I don ' t want to hear it ." For forty-five mi nutes
we talked about whether he would hear what I had to say. Now
don ' t ask me how you can consume forty- f i ve minutes -- but I
wasn't gonna let it go . I hung in like a bulldog in saying in
any way that I could think of including things like saying "You
don ' t have to do anything. I'm just asking you to listen to the
reasons put forth by people that I feel deeply committed to
seeing progress in Birmingham." So , after forty-five minutes he
relented and said, "Well, I'll give you a couple of minutes."
ANDREW M. MANIS: How did he respond once you gave him the
reasons?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well , like "Now, you've said your piece . "
ANDREW M. MANIS: How do you think they f i nally decided to go
ahead and postpone just after the election?
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well , with the danger of being overly
egotistical, my feeling is that this report is probably the only
direct report they had of what the political situation was in
Birmingham and the Blacks out of necessi ty had pretty well
decided that always there is some other time and there are ten
reasons why you shouldn ' t do anything now and so their reluctance
to even hear what was being said and done by the people
interested in the change , and even including Blacks and I am not
sure at this point -- I wish I had a better memory -- I think
this was the consensus too of most Blacks in Birmingham that at
that time this would help Connor. So my feeling was that that
trip made the difference .
35
ANDREW M. MANIS: Let me skip back to something that I asked over
a moment ago and that is, you told me how you think Pitts felt
about Shuttlesworth, what about Ware?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I'm guessing. My speculation is that Ware
was really upset with and hostile towards Shuttlesworth.
ANDREW M. MANIS: You don't have any direct recollection?
REVEREND JIMERSON: No, no direct recollection.
ANDREW M. MANIS: But that's your general impression?
REVEREND JIMERSON: That would be my speculation.
ANDREW M. MANIS: We are about to run out of time so let me just
ask you other instances where you were able to observe
Shuttlesworth or converse with Shuttlesworth that stick out in
your mind. Are there any? I know that is a rather open ended
sort of question which doesn't help jog your memory in any way.
REVEREND JIMERSON: I'm sure I had to have some personal contacts
with Shuttlesworth in that three years. I do not remember at any
point in which I made any repeated efforts to see him. When
those occasions were, certainly at the point that I invited him
to my office, that he wanted some help from me, we were on a
first name basis, so there had to be some association but it just
simply gone with time and I can't recall. I think it would have
been obvious to him that I supported him. Some of those mass
meetings, any of the mass meetings that I went to probably other
than some white detective, I would be the only white person in
the mass meeting and I am sure that kind of stuff gets
communicated in one way or another. These were Shuttlesworth's
36
meetings .
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you have any recollections of his
performances at the -- I hesitate to use that word -- but any
recollections of his performances at the mass meetings?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I really can't recal l. The re is something
about me that remembers that Shuttlesworth was kind of like the
-- I don 't know as I -- I need better vocabulary. There was
something about Shuttlesworth that when he spoke it was kind of
like throwing down the gauntlet . Like "thi s is the way it is
going to be. I say its gonna be that way and that ' s the way its
gonna be." That kind of approach in some things I might have
agreed with but thought it was rather unusual in that kind of
speaking with the authority of "Because I say it, it's gonna
happen. " I think that may be generic to Black Baptists , but, I
think Shuttlesworth had a good dose of that.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you have any speculation on where that came
from, from Shuttlesworth or how he developed that?
REVEREND JIMERSON: There could have been some real reasons for
him to feel like he was the only one in town who was doing
anything.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I guess if you ' ve been blown out of bed and
survive to tell it you might take on the kind of authority that
you wouldn ' t have before.
REVEREND JIMERSON: I think, as I say , it puzzles me and its just
a gap , as to why time in Birmingham that I never made it a point
to go and find the leader of the mass meetings and talk with him.
37
ANDREW M. MANIS: It could be because he lived in Cincinnati at
the time.
REVEREND JIMERSON: Well, that, I guess I really until now I
hadn1t remembered. But I do remember now when you speak about it
when he moved to Cincinnati.
ANDREW M. MANIS: It was just about the time you moved there.
REVEREND JIMERSON: The time I got to Birmingham, he went to
Cincinnati. Because I made it a point of going around looking up
people. I would get names from somebody and they give me other
people. I really spent an awful lot of time going from person to
person both in the white community but even more particularly in
the Black community.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Do you have any other recollections of what the
Black community felt about Shuttlesworth?
REVEREND JIMERSON: My general impression was that the Black
community really respected him. I think he had high marks with
the Blacks.
ANDREW M. MANIS: How would you, just in your general evaluation
of some of these leaders that you dealt with personally and
observed, particularly those years that you were in Birmingham,
how would you evaluate Fred Shuttlesworth and his significance or
his importance to the Movement?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I would think without any question that he
was the one person and it would be hard to find anyone who would
be a close second to him and his leadership in Birmingham. I
think with good reason the other factions of Birmingham, none of
38
these factions had the primary goal of getting people involved in
making any change . They were more i nto power and l eadership l ike
a Black Baptist minister ' s group which in normal business was
quite different than Civil Rights . I think without any question
what happened in Birmingham, Shuttlesworth was the key.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Just to round out this interview with the few
seconds we have left , what led to your leaving Birmingham?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I was simply battle-weary, worn out ,
frazzled. Most of the time during that three years, there was
constant telephone harassment , several threats on my life and it
was just being weary. Also , I would have left a few months
earl ier if I had had a job. I was ready for some escape for
several months. But I got to Birmingham just at the time I
had agreed to go before the freedom riders were beaten up and got
there just after that. Then when the Ci vil Rights Act of ' 64 was
passed , that was in June or so and it seemed appropriate for the
good of the Council for somebody else to come in. So whether it
was good for the Council, it was good for me to get out.
ANDREW M. MANIS: And you went to what position?
REVEREND JIMERSON: I went to Kalamazoo College as Director of
Student Service Program whi ch was putting students on the job .
Kalamazoo College was looking for an American Baptist minister
who had some concerns about social issues so they found me.
ANDREW M. MANIS : I 'm glad you got out of there safely and I
appreciate your taking some time to reminisce with me this
afternoon. It's been a good experience for me and I know you
39
filled in some gaps even though you probably think you 're memory
wasn't good enough .
REVEREND JIMERSON: One of my regrets is that I'm not very good
at citing records and one of those times when you get frustrated
over records that you haven't properly filed, it's easier to
throw them out than it is to file them. I threw out logs that I
kept in Birmingham.
ANDREW M. MANIS: Well, I'm very sorry t o hear that but I'm
grateful for letting me take some of your time this afternoon.
40